As new features are added to the platform, navigation is becoming more complex. Information from the Personnel page about staff budgets will eventually be pulled into the budget planning page. This allows users to plan out their spending for future fiscal years, but they will have to constantly switch between pages to accomplish this.
The amount of information a user would have to navigate through in order to achieve their goals prompted me to examine how that information was presented to them. The aim was to create two different flows to demonstrate how users could accomplish the same task and testing to see which works best for them. It is crucial that the Personnel and Planning pages are cohesive and that the experience between them is optimized to assist them in achieving their objectives efficiently and seamlessly.
Edstruments is a cross between an EdTech and FinTech company. Their product is a financial dashboard that can be used by everyone from district CFOs to school leaders and individual budget owners, to make more effective and transparent decisions with their finances.
- Understand the Problem
- Project Scope & Timeline
- Competitive Research
- User Stories
- Heuristic Analysis
- User Flow
- Wireframes
- High Fidelity Prototype
- Conduct Usability Testing (A/B testing interface)
- Measure success
- Create Design Recommendations
I conducted a comprehensive heuristic evaluation of the entire software, identifying usability issues in the user interface so that they can be addressed as part of the process of iterative design.
Here is my design of their user flow that helped me better understand the connection between the Personnel and Planning page. As a result, I was able to see what the users process was like in accomplishing their goals, as well as where improvements could be made.
In the redesigned user flow, I focused on keeping the process continuous. Having the user click forward, so they never have to stop and decide where to go next.
I recruited participants through Linkedin, Facebook groups, and personal connections. For them to be eligible for the study, it was necessary that they’ve used planning or budgeting sites.
The cohort
Here are 4 of the main issues that I found when testing the design, along with solutions for improvement.
All of the participants used the buttons on the pages instead of the navigation bar to go directly to their subpage.
Consider including direct links to other subpages.
Following their scenario creation, participants wanted to promptly see their entire scenario, along with all the details.
Recommended to have the "Create Scenario" button located on the same page as the other scenarios.
Some found the language to be different from what they use in their everyday workplace.
It is advised to use words, phrases, and concepts that are familiar to the target audience.
When the action buttons were located next to each other, participants were able to complete their tasks with ease.
Recommended to keep similar task buttons side-by-side.
" Diana was an absolute pleasure to work with as we aimed to build more cohesion between two disparate aspects of our software platform. Diana was able to come into an already built product, understand the complexities of the system, existing design elements, and the problem at hand to give us some incredibly useful ways to increase user friendliness and create a great experience for all users of our platform. In meetings Diana did a great job of listening and deeply understanding the company objective as well as the user needs to create a design solution that met both set of criteria. After just one experience working with Diana, I know she'll be an asset to any organization looking to re-vamp their product offering with a new user-centric design. "
